


Metroid: Samus Returns Review

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: Metroid Series, Metroid: Other M, Metroid: Samus Returns
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from lurkdragonstuff blog, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, Reviews, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-10-07 05:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17359514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: A Metroid: Samus Returns review that is also a (highly critical) retrospective on Metroid: Other M.





	Metroid: Samus Returns Review

I went into  _Metroid: Samus Returns_  with very lowered expectations.

I held off on getting it until the earliest adopters had spoken, and until friends I trusted said it was good. In and of itself, that isn’t particularly unusual for me: the last game I pre-ordered was  _The Last Guardian_ , and that was because I had an order in for it from before I stopped pre-ordering things.

You see, I pre-ordered  _The Last Guardian_  before  _Metroid: Other M_  came out.

Bluntly,  _Metroid: Other M_  is the single worst videogame I have ever played. Oh, I’ve played games that are undoubtedly worse mechanically, and seen games that are worse philosophically, but _Other M_ is the worst game  _I_  have ever played: it’s the game that left the most bitter taste of bile in my mouth, and has become my ultimate litmus test. Sure, I might be struggling against an unfair boss, I say to myself, and this game may have been written by people with more than two issues with bigotry to work out, but it always comes down to the singular question: does this game, in all its crappy glory, make me feel the utter frustration and simmering, lingering  _anger_  that  _Other M_  did?

So far, seven years on, the answer has always been no.

Maybe that means I should play more bad games, but the thing is, I can shrug off a bad game. It’s harder to shrug off a game in a series I’ve loved for a long time that seems to indicate that everything I’ve ever enjoyed about a series is Wrong, and that I should be enjoying the series for These Reasons instead of Those Reasons. That everything I’d ever known about a hero I’ve loved and looked up to for years was wrong. That silent storytelling and environmental hints and a scrapbook of inferences can’t possibly tell a story, that I should be happy that finally - finally! - we were learning things that couldn’t possibly have been conveyed before. Never mind that these things are the antithesis of everything the series previously stood for.

I’m happy to be proven wrong about headcanons, but the new canon has to make sense. And not insult me.  _Other M_  was a baffling anomaly, a worst hits compilation of gameplay mechanics from the rest of the series reinterpreted in boring and frustrating ways, with a story that seemed to be gunning for everything I liked about Samus Aran and the wider  _Metroid_  universe.

What’s worse, very little that Nintendo has done with the series since  _Other M_  has filled me with any kind of confidence that the  _Metroid_  they want to make going forward and the  _Metroid_  that I fell in love with playing  _Prime_ and  _Fusion_  were the same thing anymore. And, you know, that happens sometimes, but either way, _Samus Returns_  had to compete with seven years of frustration at how Nintendo’s been handling the  _Metroid_  series and its star.

It had to compete with  _Other M_. It had to compete with  _Super Smash Bros. For WiiU and 3DS_  and the jet heels. It had to compete with  _Metroid Prime: Federation Force_ , a game I had and have zero interest in because I’m not into multiplayer, that from what I know about the final boss continued to tell me that Nintendo still had no idea what I find appealing about Samus as a character. And, yes, it had to compete with  _Another Metroid 2 Remake_ , a joy of a fangame that is everything I’ve wanted out of  _Metroid_  since beating  _Prime 3_. It had to compete with Nintendo’s  _reaction_  to  _AM2R_ , which to me is one of those things I believe copyright holders should probably have the right to do but probably shouldn’t do except in much more dire circumstances than what led to  _AM2R_ , because they are shooting their own legacies in the foot. (It’s the same way I feel about authors banning fanfic. Okay, sure, you do that, you own the thing and it’s your right if you don’t want people playing in your sandbox, but I’ll usually think you’re being an ass and probably won’t buy your books.)

So. Yeah. I was  _not expecting much._

But. I am pleased to say I was wrong.

Much like what  _Zero Mission_  did for the original  _Metroid_ ,  _Samus Returns_  is a retelling of the 1991 Game Boy game  _Metroid II: Return of Samus_ , with updated graphics, an updated moveset, a map system, and some expansions on the story. Famed bounty hunter Samus Aran has been commissioned by the Galactic Federation to wipe out the last of the Metroids, an alien species that has proven to be a dangerous living weapon in the claws of the Space Pirates. To that end, she’s been sent to their home planet of SR388 after a squad of soldiers were wiped out on the same mission.

It’s not the most complicated story in the world, and it doesn’t need to be. If you’ve ever played a Metroidvania, you know the drill: Samus begins relatively weak at the start of the game, progresses through the labyrinthine caves of SR388, finds powerups that increase her durability, firepower, and movement options, and by the end she’s an unstoppable force and it’s great. 

I found the bosses to be a fair bit more challenging than usual for the series, but nothing undoable, and the addition of a checkpoint system to pop you right back into the action if you die is a  _very_  welcome change from series standards. I didn’t really use save points much at all beyond force of habit - the 3DS’ sleep function worked just fine.

There’s a nice balance between exploration and fighting, and I had a lot more fun with the combat system than I worried I might. New to the series are four Aeion abilities, super moves which I was hesitant about but ended up enjoying a lot. The puzzle-oriented ones are used for some very nice little puzzles, and the combat-oriented ones give you an optional emergency boost that I didn’t use all that much, but it was nice to have for a couple of bosses.

Also new to the series is a melee counter move, and not really new but  _vastly improved_  are the quicktime counters during the boss fights.  _Other M_  had something kind of like them, but the thing is, the conditions to activate them felt super arbitrary: they were fiddly to get to work, and rarely had a clear tell that This Was The Moment. In  _Samus Returns_ , melee counters for all enemies have a distinctive clicking sound and visual effect that tells you  _now is the time_ , including with bosses, but you still have to be quick on the draw - but not too quick! - to get them as the enemy charges you. 

When you get them against an enemy, it’s a little jolt of satisfaction: Samus backhands enemies with her Arm Cannon (so, backguns?) to knock them dizzy, giving you an opening to fire. During bosses, Samus smacks the boss (usually a Metroid) with her arm canon right as it’s attacking her, then  _goes to town on them_ , wrestling them, throwing them by their tails, firing missiles at point blank range into their mouths and it’s  _great_  and  _I love it_  and  _this is how you do quicktimes right!_  

It feels like a  _genuine rally_ , like you’re getting an opportunity to be a badass because you found an opening in your enemy’s defenses. You still have some control in the sense of pressing fire to shoot off missiles during these rallies, and later bosses will recover and attack right at the end, too, and you’ll need to be very quick to get out of the way.

I was leery of quicktimes in the trailers, because I was afraid it would be more of the same final strike garbage _Other M_  did. I was wrong, and I’m happy about that.

Do I still have some reservations about Nintendo as a company? Sure: locking content behind Amiibos is still a shitty thing to do, and I hope that when 3DS emulation becomes more viable that people break that nonsense wide open. (For the record, I did play without Amiibos.) Shutting down  _AM2R_ , even if understandable in light of  _Samus Returns_  being in the works, was still a shitty thing to do. And  _Other M_  still burned me badly enough that it would take something truly, truly special to get me to pre-order anything ever again.

But, hey.  _Samus Returns_  is, at the end of the day, a true return of Samus Aran, Galactic Warrior. I absolutely loved a lot of the silent storytelling here; it’s been a staple of the series for a long time and oh, it’s so good. I particularly enjoyed Samus’ return to a silent protagonist role, and one that let her personality shine through loud and clear once again. There’s a particular couple of boss intros and outros that just had me going “ _Yeah!_ ” at how, well,  _extremely Samus_  they were. I think if I say the penultimate and final non-Metroid bosses, that will tell folks who played the game which ones without spoiling anything.

And, yes, they handled the original game’s signature scene at the end wonderfully.

I was worried about how Samus was going to be written because of  _frigging everything_ , and  _I was wrong. **I was wrong!**  _I have rarely been so happy to have been so wrong.

I’m not here to tell you that you need to get it to save the series, or whatever. That kind of talk always rubs me the wrong way: get this game, get  _any_  game if it piques your interest and you’ll think you’ll have a rewarding experience playing it. Don’t buy games you don’t think you’ll like. There’s not enough money or time for that in the world. 

But I am here to say this: If  _Metroid_  has ever meant anything to you, if  _Other M_  disappointed you as badly as it did me, or if you’re new to the series and think you’ll enjoy exploring an alien world filled to the brim with grungy beauty and a lot of strange and cool monsters, I highly recommend  _Metroid: Samus Returns_.

Welcome back, Samus. It’s so, so good to see you again.


End file.
